


No Desire For New Streams

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Colonization, Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, Female Character of Color, Gen, Gen Fic, Post Season 4, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all Cylons tried to think of themselves as just another part of humanity, and the culture shock of being stuck together on Earth 2.0 is hard to get past for one Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Desire For New Streams

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rose_griffes , who asked on her wishlist for stories about Cylons adapting to Earth life.

The new planet was the most frightening place Two had ever seen, even through the datafont. He’d never left a baseship. He’d never taken a name. He’d never actually seen humans, not when there was always a back room or the Hybrid’s chamber to retreat to. All he cared about was staying in his home with his brothers and sisters. Safe. Right. Clean.

“Please let me stay,” he begged the Imperious Leader of the Centurions as the last organic supplies were offloaded onto the last Heavy Raider, as the Fleet had granted the Centurions leave to depart this system forever. “I can help with the Raiders, and interpret the Hybrid for you.”

The Centurion shook his head with a short clinking sound. One long silver finger reflected the red of the walls as he pointed outwards.

The Two choked at the order, but walked out. He was being abandoned in a foreign world by everyone he thought cared for him.

He stole his way down to the Hybrid chamber, letting his hands rest on the cool black walls. A few minutes before they found him, he knelt close enough that his eyes reflected the glow of her liquid and tubes and listened closely to her words, tried to absorb them. He prayed earnestly to the God he thought was still with them that he would not die a horrific death, even though his brethren had committed blasphemy and destroyed the gift of eternal life that they had been given.

A Centurion came before he was finished and showed him the way to the hangar bay. The Two looked one last time into the eyes of the animal Raiders as he walked by.

“What are you still doing here?” asked an incredulous Sonja as she stepped aboard the Heavy Raider in her black jacket, bag in hand.

“I don’t want to leave,” the Two told her, burying his face in his hands as he joined her to  sit in the Heavy Raider. He was just a little closer to her than he had to be, the familiar shape and sound and smell of the Sixes a reminder that the humans had not destroyed everything of his former life with this alliance.

The ship shuddered as it started the flight down to the new planet.

“What do you mean?” Sonja asked, pulling slightly away from him, hesitation in her look.

The Two just shook his head and kept his eyes closed. Cylons were home, Cylons were family, Cylons were everything that was right in the universe. And yet they approached these exotic, dangerous enemies and begged to be allowed in. With their foreign ways and their terrifying diversity, they were ruining all that he called home.

“If you had any problems with the settlement on this planet, you should have brought them up in the consensus,” Sonja said practically, surreptitiously scooting along the seat away from the desperate Two.

“One shouldn’t break opinion from the model,” the Two murmured.

Sonja sighed. “There’s no other choice now.”

The Two shivered. He knew that all too well. But he wouldn’t let it all happen at once to him. As soon as he set foot on the new planet (no Cylon should ever have to remove from their glorious baseships), he would find the nearest conclave of brothers or sisters and he would stick to them.

***

“Leoben, stop it!” snapped Maureen (an Eight) finally, as Two slunk behind her on the way back from rations.

“Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,” the Two murmured to himself, hands like blinders around his face to keep out the humans. A few steps later, he looked at her. “I am not Leoben.”

“No, you’re broken, obviously,” Maureen said, and shook her head with a groan.

“If I look at their faces,” the Two said, walking backwards to keep facing her as they moved forward and talked at the same time. “If I see the way they change from face to face, from height to height, voice to voice—I’ll panic.”

Maureen rolled her eyes. “Why?”

“Because they’re human,” the Two hissed. He stumbled over a rock in the road and licked his lips as he gathered himself, intensely keeping his eyes on her as they walked through the human settlement. “They don’t reflect the Cylon unity that I was brought up to admire. Everything that is their nature is strange and wrong, and yet there isn’t escape for me. Why should I not be afraid of losing my mind?”

“Because you’re a racist moron,” Maureen said flatly, and shoved him slightly out of the way as she entered her house.

“Eight, I can’t do it!” the Two protested, following her over the threshold. “I haven’t been able to sleep—it is too dark here, the beds are too soft.”

“We’re sleeping on tiny pallets.”

“They’re not the black metal I’m used to,” Two explained. “And the food! And there are no Centurions anywhere, no Hybrids, no Raiders even. I step out any door and I’m in a human world, where any second I may be shot through the heart.”

Maureen had pushed back the dark bangs still common to many of the Eights, and was now rubbing her forehead and leaning back against her kitchen counter as Two spoke. “Finished?”

The Two sunk into a chair, closing his eyes to keep from looking at the wooden table. His shiver was like a spasm.

“First,” Maureen began. “I am not ‘Eight’. I am Maureen. Why don’t you start there.”

“Why don’t I start with giving up my most precious identity?” the Two spat at her.

“Oh for frak’s sake,” Maureen muttered. “What happened to you?”

“I never left the ships when you took over New Caprica,” the Two murmured, staring at his fingers. “I never wanted to do anything but live in the light of God’s will as we explored the universe. I followed my model, hoping that unity would save us. But it only brought me to this god- _forsaken_ place.”

“Look,” Maureen said, and took a seat across from him at the table. As he refused to look up, she reached out a hand and put it on his.

The Two knew the way that the Eights felt. There were only a few touches he’d had to learn, and theirs were easily discernible as the softest. It reminded him of home, and his eyes stung. She was right; he was broken. All he wanted was to be back in a baseship.

“I have no idea why you followed me home,” Maureen began.

“The Six I was with found a way to abandon me while we were getting food,” the Two muttered.

“I don’t blame her,” Maureen said. “But you are one of my brothers, messed up or not. So...I’m going to give you some advice.”

The Two looked up at her, almost able to project a baseship around her calm face.

“You’re being childish,” Maureen said. “I’m trying to explain this so you can understand...we’re humanity’s children. Now that we’re growing up, we join them. Got it? I don’t know how slow you need to take it, but you can’t just stay a child forever.”

The Two squeezed her hand. “What if we’re doing it wrong?”

“That’s humanity, Two,” Maureen said flatly. “Flaws. Get used to it.” She stood up and sighed.

“I’m one of the few who hasn’t chosen a name, aren’t I?” the Two asked, looking up at her.

“Yes.”

“So if I try to ‘grow up’, I must take a name. If I ‘stay a child’ and keep model unity, I must take a name. So what is the difference again?”

“I know you’re all good at it, but don’t pick at the details,” Maureen warned, and leaned over the table towards him. She groaned and glanced down at the table before meeting his eyes again. “You know, if it helps, go ahead and start with the name. Think of it as keeping model unity. It’s a good step 1.”

“Then I shall be Emery,” the Two said after a second.

Maureen raised an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

“I was prepared for if my model ever chose to force names on all of us.” Emery shrugged.

“You’re seriously whacked up in the head,” Maureen said, nodding slowly towards him. Then, with a brief grimace, “Maybe you should stay here until you’ve got a better start on things.”

“May I?” Emery looked up with relief in his face.

Maureen sighed. “Yes. You’re dangerous out there.”

Emery looked at his hands again and breathed out. His hands. Not a Two’s hands—Emery’s hands. It sent a chill down his spine, but it didn’t make him feel sick. That was a start.

“But I will never stop being a Two,” he explained as he stood from his chair, feeling that maybe he could imagine this place as a home as long as no humans showed up.

“As long as Twos wash dishes and help cook dinner,” Maureen said. “Because I’m not feeding you if you don’t help.”

“That’s what humans do,” Emery said skeptically, standing on the opposite side of the table from the kitchen.

“Grow up and grab a dishcloth,” Maureen ordered and turned to sort the garlic from the leeks in the rations she’d brought back from the settlement. “It’s what Twos do now too.”

Emery swallowed slowly, prayed to the memory of the Hybrid, and hoped that what he was doing was not sacrilegious as he followed his sister Cylon into the tiny kitchen. Apparently it was time to grow up into one of his parent race. But for the time being, he would just imagine that he was polishing a Raider, not a sink borrowed from the humans. Baby steps, after all.


End file.
